The object was a large asteroid, which they named Apophis after the Egyptian 40 he god of evil. Bigger than a sports arena, it comes frighteningly close to our planet every 15 few years. By Christmas, Tholen had calculated or that the chance Apophis would smash into Earth on April 13, 2029, was one in 40 Alarm about the threat started to spread to the a public. Then, on December 26, 2004, a real 20 catastrophe struck: the Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.